Canada hypocritical to label Xinjiang genocide, Chinese state newspaper says

Name: US declares China has committed genocide in its treatment of Uygurs in Xinjiang
Uploaded: 2021-02-28T11:46:21.000Z
Duration: 2 min 27 s
Description: US declares China has committed genocide in its treatment of Uygurs in Xinjiang

Communist Party mouthpiece says Canada is ‘notorious for its human rights record’, citing past use of residential schools for indigenous people

Beijing continues to lash out over Canadian parliament’s motion calling its policies in Xinjiang a genocide against Uygurs and other Muslim minorities

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China has dismissed accusations over what it calls its re-education camps for Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. Photo: AFP

Jun Mai

Published: 7:46pm, 28 Feb 2021Updated: 8:41pm, 28 Feb 2021

The Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper has hit back at a motion passed by the Canadian parliament last week that said Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang constituted genocide, claiming that the label applied to Canada’s past treatment of its own indigenous people.

“Canada is notorious for its human rights record, but some politicians have indulged in ideological confrontation and cooked up an anti-China farce,” read a Sunday commentary in Zhong Sheng, a column in party mouthpiece People’s Daily that tackles international issues. The pseudonym translates as “the voice of China”.

“It’s doomed to fail and to be despised,” the column said.

It was referring to a non-binding motion passed last Monday by Canada’s parliament by a vote of 266-0, which said China’s policies in Xinjiang, in its far west, amounted to genocide against Uygurs and other mostly Muslim minorities. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and most members of his cabinet abstained from the vote.

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US declares China has committed genocide in its treatment of Uygurs in Xinjiang

The motion also called on the International Olympic Committee to move the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing if the treatment continued.